A Talk in the Park
by Lady Lostris
Summary: Harry gets a summertime visit from Lupin. After book 5. Warning: spoiler for book 5.


A Talk in the Park  
  
Author's note: None of these characters belong to me. They belong to J.K. Rowling and Scholastic Books.  
  
The morning dawned bright at number four, Privet Drive. The only resident of the house who knew the day wouldn't be enjoyable was young Harry Potter. The sky was the brightest blue he had seen in weeks, meaning that the Dursleys would shove him outside again. Not that that was a bad thing, just that blue skies hadn't managed to cheer him up since Sirius had --  
  
He didn't want to think about that. Sirius' death had left him no family, real or otherwise, than the three who tried to pretend he didn't exist except when he was in their way, which was most of the time. True, he had been like this before, but he felt more alone now, having known the love of a father and then lost it, and without anyone to share his grief with. The Dursleys wouldn't want to hear it, and wouldn't care if they did. They wouldn't let him send Hedwig out during the day, and he didn't think Ron and Hermoine would want to read his letters exclusively about Sirius anyway. And this was the time when he needed a father most, right when Voldemort was gaining his power again. He needed the support only family could give. At least he knew now why he had to stay with the Dursleys. He heard noises from downstairs and rolled back over to pretend to be asleep.  
  
It was the middle of the morning and Harry hadn't come out of his room yet. Better to stay out of their way than give them a reason to shove him outside. Suddenly, Uncle Vernon, who was downstairs in the living room, heard a knock on the door. Peeking through the window, he saw a man of about his age, with graying hair and a threadbare coat. He looked vaguely familiar to Vernon, who now remembered having seen him as part of Harry's "welcoming committee" when they had picked him up at King's Cross Station. He opened the door.  
  
"Who are you and what are you doing at my house?" he asked abruptly.  
  
"Remus Lupin. I'm here to see Harry," the visitor answered, unfazed by Vernon's bluntness. "You'd be wise to remember what Moody said." Upon seeing Vernon's look of incomprehension, Lupin added, "The man with the eye."  
  
This brought Vernon back to attention and he realized that he didn't want this man seen on his front stoop. He opened the door wider to let him in, then closed the door behind him. He turned around and called up the stairs, "Get down here, boy! One of your freaky friends is here to see you." He turned back around to face the visitor, and the look on Lupin's face was unmistakable. He clearly didn't like being called a "freaky friend" of Harry's.  
  
"Harry might not be allowed to use magic outside of Hogwart's, but there's nothing stopping me from doing it."  
  
Harry heard his uncle calling him and wondered who would be coming to visit him. More specifically, who would be coming to see him that would know the proper way to gain entrance to a Muggle house. He had just opened his door and caught the tail end of Lupin's words. When he saw who his visitor was, his face broke out into a smile and he skipped down the stairs. "Lupin! What are you doing here?"  
  
Lupin smiled at Harry's reaction. "Hi, Harry. I've come to take you for a walk."  
  
Uncle Vernon, however, was less than thrilled at the prospect of his nephew being seen in the company of this man. "What makes you think I'm going to allow you to walk off with my nephew?" he sputtered.  
  
Lupin remained unfazed. "James and Lily would have wanted us to do what's best for their son. I'm the only one left who can do that now. I'm taking Harry for a walk." He spoke calmly, looking right at Vernon.  
  
Vernon didn't know whom this Lupin meant by "us," but upon hearing the names of Harry's parents he decided that he just wanted this man out of his house, he didn't care what he did with Harry. Vernon drew himself up to full height, stretched his head on his nonexistent neck, and said with all the courage he could muster, which wasn't much, "Well, take him for a walk if you must, just be sure you're not gone to long." Then he turned resolutely around and marched back into the living room.  
  
Lupin opened the door and followed Harry outside. "I know you need to talk, even if you don't think you do, so I'm here to talk. But," he added before Harry could say anything, "we're not going to do it here. We're going to wait until we get to a park." Then he fell silent.  
  
Neither of them spoke until they had walked to a park and sat under the shade of a tree. Lupin settled himself and spoke first. "Now I know you're upset about what happened to Sirius--"  
  
Before he could finish, Harry burst out. "Why? Why did he have to go there?" He knew Dumbledore had explained it to him, but he needed to hear it from someone who had known Sirius as well as Lupin had.  
  
"You were in danger, Harry. Sirius wanted to do what was best for you, and to know you were safe."  
  
"How is dying what's best for me? It would have been better if he had stayed where he was. Didn't he care how I would feel?" Harry felt his temper trying to take over again. He must not lose his temper here, in front of this man, his father's only remaining childhood friend.  
  
"Harry," Lupin forced Harry to look at him, "Sirius cared about you more than he cared about anyone. You were like--you were a son to him. He knew how you felt about him, which is why he wasn't surprised when he found out that you thought You-Know-Who had him. He was expecting that You-Know-Who would use him to get you there. And he knew he'd be risking his life by going there, but he was risking it for you. There wasn't anything in the world could have stopped him from coming to make sure you were all right." "But if I'd just continued my lessons in Occulemency, Voldemort couldn't have used Sirius to get me there."  
  
"Harry, You-Know-Who would have found some other way to get you there. He wanted you there, and he would have found a way to use Sirius to get you there."  
  
Lupin's words comforted Harry. Sirius had done it for him, even if he couldn't fully understand why. There was nothing he could have done to stop what happened. And someday, someday soon he knew, would come the final fight with Voldemort, the one where he would either avenge the deaths of his parents and Sirius, or he would join them in death.  
  
However, Harry still didn't completely understand. "But how could he do this to me? First to lose my parents, and then the only father I've ever known--"  
  
"Do you think you're the only one who's suffering from Sirius' death?" interrupted Lupin.  
  
Harry looked at Lupin, shocked. It was the most upset he'd ever seen Lupin. "What?"  
  
"You're right, you've lost both parents and a godfather. But you forget something. I used to have three best friends. I've lost all of them, plus someone else I cared about."  
  
Harry just continued to look at Lupin. Lupin continued. "First James was killed, and then I thought that Wormtail (Lupin couldn't bring himself to use his real name) had been killed and Sirius had done it. Imagine, one of my best friends a murdered, and of Muggles too! Just when I came to terms with that, I found out that Wormtail was actually responsible for the death and wasn't dead, and Sirius was wrongfully accused. So I had my friend back, and the son of another friend, but now I've lost the friend I had remaining. So you see, I've suffered loss too. James and Lily dead, Wormtail turned traitor, and now Sirius dead too."  
  
Harry recovered enough to speak. "I never thought of it that way."  
  
"There's more. It's not just you and I. There are others that cared about Sirius too. True, not as much as we did maybe, but they cared. There's your friends, Ron, Hermoine, Ginny, in fact all of the Weasleys, except maybe Percy and Charlie, Dumbledore, Hagrid, the rest of the Order..quite a lot of people wish Sirius hadn't died." Lupin paused for a moment to catch his breath and continued.  
  
"There's more. You feel alone now, you think you have only the Dursleys for family." Harry nodded. "That depends on how you define family. If you define it by the strictest terms Sirius was never your family at all. I'm not done," he said, holding up a hand to stop Harry from speaking. "But if you define family as those who really care about you, to include your friends too, you've got a much larger family. Just think about it. There's me, there's Dumbledore, there's Hermoine, Hagrid, the Weasleys.you know Molly considers you a surrogate son. You're not as alone as you think you are, in your grief or otherwise. Sirius wouldn't have gone if he knew that his death would have left you completely alone."  
  
Harry sat there for a moment, thinking about what Lupin had said. "You're right. I never thought of it that way. And although no one will ever replace my parents or Sirius, I've got plenty of people who will be there for me if I need them."  
  
Lupin smiled at these words. "And remember Harry, Sirius isn't really gone. He's in here," he pointed at his head, "and in here," he pointed at his chest. "You've got your memories of him. He'll never be completely gone."  
  
Harry nodded. "I'm glad you came and talked to me, Lupin."  
  
"Please Harry, call me Remus. All of my friends do."  
  
"I thought all of your friends called you Moony."  
  
"All of the best ones did." He pulled something out of his coat pocket and handed it to Harry. "Here, I want you to have this. It was taken in our seventh year."  
  
Harry looked at it. He saw four familiar faces looking back at him. There were his mother and father, and there was Lu--Remus, and there was Sirius. They were sitting on a couch in the Gryffindor common room waving at him with goofy grins on their faces. "That was shortly after James and Lily started going out," Lupin said. Harry looked some more. The Marauders.no wait, three of the Marauders, looked like they had just had the time of their lives. Lupin answered Harry's unasked question. "Wormtail took the picture."  
  
Harry stuck it in his pocket. "Thanks Remus!" Here was a picture of his father with his two best friends. He refused to think of Wormtail as one of his father's best friends. He got up. "I should probably be getting back." Lupin rose and walked with him.  
  
Neither said anything on the walk back to the Dursleys'. Harry was thinking about what Remus had said, and Lupin was lost in thought as well. They arrived back at number four, and Uncle Vernon was waiting for them. "You didn't dawdle too long in the neighborhood, did you?" he asked.  
  
"Oh for Merlin's sake, Dursley, come off it, will you?" Again Harry was surprised to hear Lupin's tone of voice, and Uncle Vernon wasn't exactly pleased to hear the name of a mythic wizard spoken in his house. "You tell your neighbors that Harry attends St. Bart's School for Criminally Incurable Boys. I'm exactly the type of person they'd expect to see connected with a school like that."  
  
"H--how did you know about that?" Uncle Vernon huffed into his moustache, glaring at Harry, sure he had told this man about that.  
  
"We were watching Harry all last summer, or didn't you get that out of the note I left you?" Lupin asked.  
  
"You left that?" Vernon said in an accusatory tone. "You're the one that took my nephew last summer?"  
  
"One of them, yes." Lupin answered. Then he turned to Harry. "Goodbye, Harry. If you need to talk, you know where to find me."  
  
Vernon turned on Harry, intending to warn him that he was to have no contact with this man. But before he could yell anything at Harry, Harry took the picture out of his pocket, waved it in the air, said "Thanks Remus!" again, and flew up the stairs to his room, followed closely by Vernon, who locked the door behind him. Lupin noticed this but said nothing as he snuck out the front door.  
  
Upstairs in his room, while Harry was gazing at the picture of his parents and their friends, he knew that even if Uncle Vernon kept him locked in his room all summer, he would have his pictures and his memories to keep him company. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad summer after all. 


End file.
